Call a Spade a Spade ("Dairy-Free Cheesecake" Is Not Cheesecake)

Last week some co-workers and I hit the Wednesday Farmer's Market off The Square during our lunch hour. We walked by the stand of one Lori Christilaw, the proprietor of Grace Cheesecakes. The samples she had laid out on the table were mouth-watering. While I was not able to actually purchase a slice, I did take one of her handbills. The thought of chocolate, chocolate peanut butter, and Chocoholic cheesecakes had me drooling like a Pavlovian dog. Then I noticed that she makes dairy-free cheesecakes. What in the name of fuck is a "dairy-free cheesecake"?! How can it be a cheesecake and have no dairy products in it? Ms. Christilaw, I refuse to buy any of your products – even the traditional variety – until you rename your dairy-free cakes. I get enough Orwellian doublespeak bullshit every night on the news. Either the Bush administration is pulling some lexicological sleight of hand regarding torture and domestic spying or the deaths of children in Iraq is euphemized away by some Army spokesperson as "collateral damage". I neither want nor need someone who can satisfy my chocolate craving to engage in the same purveying of bullshit. I have no idea how large a market there is for such stuff as "dairy-free cheesecake" or why you would even consider such a product here in the Dairy State. If you're missing enzymes and this precludes you from eating dairy products, then accept that the gods have not smiled upon you and suffer your fate. If you are just not wanting to eat all the fat & calories of a "traditional cheesecake", then go eat something else. I think Ms. Christilaw should stop using Orwellian doublespeak and just name the product differently. Perhaps she can take a page out of the Kraft playbook and call it Cheese Food Product Cake. Or perhaps she can try "A Dessert Product Which Is Almost, But Not Quite, Entirely Unlike Cheesecake". Better yet, leave the word "cheese" out of it altogether and give it a new name. "Tofucake". All the recipes I've seen for this item all use tofu. So call a spade a spade, Ms. Christilaw, and rename your product what it is: tofucake. Stop this fakery and this butchering of language that is worthy of the Bush administration. I would urge those in Madison who do not want to make their own cheesecake to instead buy from Wisconsin Cheesecakery which uses dairy products in each and every cheesecake they make.

I was dismayed at the Brat Fest on Saturday to find that they were serving Boca Brats. Again, more Orwellian bullshit thrust upon the culinary world. Bratwurst is made of animal flesh. Soy protein isolate is not animal flesh. This is bullshit. Get a new name. I never want to hear another fucking hippie make the lame joke about "military intelligence" being an oxymoron when they let "dairy-free cheesecake" and "soy brat" pass.

While I'm on this topic, I want to mention the Willy Street Co-op. I never want to read another blurb in their newsletter about how the FDA is in the pockets of Kraft, Archer Daniels Midland, etc. as long as there's shelf after shelf of herbal supplements. These supplements are expensive and make all kinds of claims about their health benefits – everything short of curing disease. From the Complimentary and Alternative Medicine Law Blog:

Essentially, the DSHEA (Dietary Supplements Health Education Act of 1994) affirmed that dietary supplements were to be regulated as “foods,” and not “drugs.” This means that as a general proposition, so long as they do not make impermissible claims linking their products to treatment or cure of disease, manufacturers of dietary supplements do not have to prove safety and efficacy prior to marketing and distributing dietary supplements interstate.

Manufacturers do not need to register themselves nor their dietary supplement products with FDA before producing or selling them. At present, no FDA regulations specific to dietary supplements establish minimum manufacturing standards.

So anyone can make pills with a bit of St. John's Wort, print a label full of puffery that makes near-miraculous claims about them, and the Co-op will happily carry them on their shelves. Great. An organization that does more than the average bear to instill fear into people with terms like "frankenfoods" in regards to genetically modified foods seemingly has no compunction about selling you 50 pills for extraordinary sums that have been proven neither safe nor efficacious.

How about some more info here, Willy Street Co-op. I can get the full lifestory of the organic produce you carry so how about you let us in on these supplements. Instead of just saying "use at your own risk", why not have a three-ring binder on a string in the pill aisle giving summaries of studies that find that the supplements you peddle are not efficacious?